Feasability Question.

[Dan Towner <dant at picochip dot com>]

Hi all,

I am trying to determine the feasability of porting gdb to be of use in
the following situation. My company is working on a new DSP. We have a
simulator of our DSP, which is specialised with respect to the
particular code sequence it runs (i.e., a different simulator executable
is created for every program we want to run on that simulator - because
it is specialised with respect to the code it executes, it runs much
faster than a `general purpose' simulator). The simulator already has a
lot of hooks for setting breakpoints, single/multi-stepping through
code, examining variables and so on. The simulator is controlled using
either a text-based CLI, or through Tcl/Tk. 

We would like to be able to use gdb to drive the simulator. From my
limited understanding of how gdb works, it should be possible to create
an inferior process (i.e., the simulator) which can then be controlled
from gdb, either by reading/writing the appropriate text strings to
control the inferior's CLI, or by using a stub which is linked with the
simulator. Is this feasible, or am I missing something? If I were to
begin to port gdb, is there an existing version which could give me a
basis to work from?

Thanks,

 Dan.

=============================================================================
Daniel Towner
picoChip Designs Ltd., Riverside Buildings, 108, Walcot Street, BATH,
BA1 5BG
dant@picochip.com
07786 702589